Georgian Bay

Everyone who has been here before told us that the Georgian Bay was the most beautiful freshwater cruising ground in North America. After a week of cruising around, I'm more than willing to agree with them. We left Midland in the morning, on a beautiful sunny day, passing this mural painted on the Archer Daniel Midlands grain elevators in the harbor on our way out. Midland has supported the creation of a number of murals in town, some just decorating the buildings, others displaying some of the local history. This particular one commemorates the arrival of the Jesuits to preach to the local native tribe (known as First Nation peoples to politically correct Canadians) in the early 1700s. Of course, since this particular tribe no longer exists, I'm not sure that the First Nation folks would necessarily be delighted to be reminded of this momentous event, especially with a 60 foot tall mural.

Midland mural

The section of the Georgian Bay we are in is called the 30,000 Islands. It is estimated that there are actually more than double that number of islands in the bay, but I suspect they got tired of counting. Of course, there is always the issue of what constitutes an island, so they decided to stop at 30,000. Many of the islands are big enough have several houses on them. Canadians refer to this area as "cottage country" and have been building summer homes on these islands for over 100 years. It seems like every Canadian we have spoken to has a family cottage somewhere on the water up here. Many of the cottages are accessible only by water. And some of them are "four season" cottages which means they are accessible by snowmobile in the winter when the water freezes. You can usually tell a four season cottage by the size of the wood pile near the back door.

Longuissa Bay

Our first anchorage was a short trip from Midland in Longuissa Bay. We passed many cottages tucked into islands on our way to Longuissa, but there were none on the shores of the anchorage. Apparently this is a good thing, because it seems that there can be tension between boaters and cottagers up here. Each group is here to have what the tourist guides refer to as "an authentic woodlands experience" and neither seems to believe that the other should be part of that experience. Boaters want pristine shorelines and cottagers want uninterrupted water views. Oh well.

Since it is prime vacation time right now, we have developed a pattern of leaving one anchorage in the morning after breakfast, traveling for 12-15 miles and pulling into a new anchorage early, usually before noon. This means we arrive before most, if not all, of our fellow boaters and we are happily anchored in the prime spot before it begins to get crowded. Actually, although we have had other boats with us in all the anchorages, none of them have been crowded. There are so many places to go, if a boat pulls in and finds other boats, there is always somewhere else to check close by.

Down Time in Echo Bay

Our favorite anchorage so far is Echo Bay. This bay is part of a provincial park so there were no cottages and lots of wildlife. We even put our toes in the water. The surface water is warm, but apparently it gets cold quickly. Ron actually dived in from the boat and he said as his hands hit the water, he was thinking "maybe this wasn't such a good idea." We had gone ashore earlier and picked up a park publication which described the phenomena of "cold shock," where you fall in the water, your body shuts down blood flow to your extremities to preserve your warmth, you begin involuntary hyperventilation to try to re-establish blood flow, and you end up drowning because you ingest too much water. Fortunately, none of the above happened to Ron, but he came out of the water right quickly.


The pictures don't do justice to how pretty it is up here with pine forests coming down to the water line. Nor can you capture the sounds of the loons calling at sunset and the flocks of geese organizing the themselves for the night. It is spectacularly beautiful.

Echo Bay

While we were in Echo Bay, we took the dingy for a two mile ride to Henry's Restaurant. Henry's is a local fish restaurant and seaplane airport. That's right, the restaurant is a licensed seaplane airport, served by five commercial airlines. Of course, the planes are only big enough to carry a couple of people plus the pilot but the food is worth the trip. In addition to seaplane parking, the restaurant also has docking room for about 40 boats. All this is because you can only get to this place by water or air. The employees live in dormitories there at the restaurant during the season because the nearest town of any size (and it is not much of a town) is more than 12 nautical miles away. The fish and chips were to die for, served family style, with a big bowl of french fries and a platter of battered pickerel (a local fish). We loved every mouthful.


I'm writing this from Parry Sound, the largest town on the Georgian Bay and the last good provisioning spot. As we head further north, the towns get smaller and further apart and the grocery stores get smaller. We've loaded on ten days worth of food and tomorrow we strike out for more anchoring. I'm not sure when the next WiFi will happen but you will hear from us then.